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Project ID: 06-3-1-05

Year: 2006

Date Started: 08/03/2006

Date Completed: 12/02/2010

Title: Fire Regimes of the Southern Appalachian Mountains; Temporal and Spatial Variability over Multiple Scales and Implications for Ecosystem Management

Project Proposal Abstract: Information about historic fire regimes and the departure of current fire regimes from historic conditions is essential for guiding and justifying management actions, such as prescribed burning programs for ecosystem restoration and fuel reduction. Such information is noticeably lacking for the southern Appalachian Mountains, where human populations are encroaching onto wildland areas, and where decades of fire exclusion have contributed to the decline of fire-associated communities and to the accumulation of hazardous fuel loads. We propose to address this knowledge gap via a multi-scale investigation of the variability in fire regimes over time and space using tree-ring reconstructions of fire history and stand dynamics in pine and mixed hardwood-pine forests. The tree-ring analyses will be augmented by soil charcoal analyses and by statistical and GIS analyses of fire records from federal agencies to address the six main research objectives: (1) identify and characterize historical fire regimes (including fire frequency, seasonality, severity, and spatial complexity) in pine and mixed hardwood-pine forests; (2) evaluate the degree and nature of departure from historical conditions in modern pine and mixed hardwood-pine forests to refine the Fire Regime Condition Class (FRCC) ratings; (3) assess the implications of altered fire regimes for vegetation dynamics; (4) identify and characterize the climate forcing mechanisms (e.g., drought, North Atlantic Oscillation, Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation) that lead to regional fire years in the southern Appalachian region; (5) elucidate the spatial patterns of wildland fire at multiple spatial scales (watershed to region) with respect to gradients of climate, lightning activity, topography, vegetation, and accessibility to human populations; and (6) communicate the results and implications of our findings to the National Park Service, the USDA Forest Service, and other land management agencies in the region. We propose to obtain the data for the proposed study from the following sources: (1) temporally precise fire-scar dates from dendrochronologically dated tree rings for developing centuries-long fire chronologies; (2) age structure data from increment cores collected from clusters of plots that are co-located with the fire-scar samples; (3) stand composition information based on thorough plot inventories; (4) charcoal distribution and radiocarbon dates for macroscopic charcoal fragments recovered from soil cores; and (5) fire occurrence and attribute data from federal agency datasets spanning the last 35 to 80 years. All data generated in this study eventually will be submitted to the International Tree-Ring Data Bank (NCDC/NOAA), the International Multiproxy Paleofire Database (NCDC/NOAA), and to FRAMES to provide timely fire history data for FRCC, LANDFIRE, and other decision support needs on federal lands. The primary benefit of the proposed research will be the development of a new regional dataset of centuries-long wildland fire records for the southern Appalachian region, and the potential of this new network to clarify longer-term wildland fire/climate relationships. In addition, our data will have broader applicability to the understanding of the ecology, vegetation history, and fire and fuels management planning and implementation needs in pine and mixed hardwood-pine forests and associated communities of this region.

Principal Investigator: Charles W. Lafon

Agency/Organization: Texas A&M University-College Station

Branch or Dept: Department of Geography

Other Project Collaborators

Type	Name	Agency/Organization	Branch or Dept
Co-Principal Investigator	Henri D. Grissino-Mayer	University of Tennessee-Knoxville	Department of Geography
Federal Cooperator	Robert Klein	NPS-National Park Service	Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Project Locations

Consortium

Appalachian

There are no project locations identified for this project.

Project Deliverables

Final Report ("Results presented in JFSP Final Reports may not have been peer-reviewed and should be interpreted as tentative until published in a peer-reviewed source.")

	ID	Type	Title
	9060	Refereed Publication	Fire in the American South: Vegetation Impacts, History, and Climatic Relations
	8344	NonRefereed Publication	Pine Chronologies in Central Appalachian Forests: Fiery Implications
	8000	NonRefereed Publication	Climate-Fire Relationships in the Southern Appalachian Mountains
	8340	NonRefereed Publication	Climate-Fire Relationships in the Southern Appalachian Mountains
	8002	Progress Report	2008 progress report
	8001	Progress Report	2007 progress report
	8349	Progress Report	2009 Progress Report (abbreviated version)
	8348	Progress Report	2009 Progress Report

Supporting Documents

There are no supporting documents available for this project.

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